The present invention relates to an apparatus for cleaning coke oven doors, and in particular to an apparatus for cleaning the bottom surface of a coke oven door plug.
Coke ovens have a plurality of chambers each of which is provided with an opening through which the finished coke is ultimately expelled. In operation of the coke oven these openings are closed by doors which can be inserted into the openings. To prevent the escape of dust and noxious gases through these openings the doors are provided with sealing surfaces which, when the respective door is seated in the associated opening, engage corresponding sealing surfaces on a frame which bounds the opening. Because of the deposits which form on these surfaces the latter must be cleaned from time to time, i.e., the deposits must be removed in order to obtain the desired sealing engagement between the surfaces on the door and on the frame bounding the opening of the respective coke oven chamber. For this purpose machinery exists, so-called door-cleaning machines, which clean the surfaces in question after the door has first been withdrawn in toto from the opening of the respective coke oven chamber.
However, these sealing surfaces are not the only ones which must be cleaned from time to time to remove deposits from them. The doors of coke oven chambers are basically composed of two sections, namely the actual door part which closes the opening and a projecting plug which extends from this door part into the coke oven chamber. This plug is made of a refractory material, such as fire brick or the like, and is supported from below by a metallic plug-supporting element that projects from the actual door part. Deposits form on the exposed lower surface of this supporting element and must be removed from time to time. Care must, however, be taken to avoid damaging the relatively readily damaged door seal which is located immediately adjacent to the plug. Heretofore the removal of deposits from the plug supporting element has been carried out manually, not only in order to avoid damaging the door seal but also because the original shape and position of the plug supporting element tend to change over a period of time due to the exposure of this element to heat and to the migration of graphite into the plug with a resultant change in the dimensions of the plug, which change then causes resultant changes in the shape and/or position of the plug supporting element. Of course, such manual work is time consuming and expensive and, moreover, it is hardly pleasant for the worker who is assigned to do it.